


When you were here before

by lilith_morgana



Series: Heaven for a sinner like me [3]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-19 22:47:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19981798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: Lucifer (mis)handles the month when Chloe is away.





	When you were here before

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a companion piece to ["And all this devotion I never knew at all" ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19900003/chapters/47134330)which has no Lucifer POV. 
> 
> It's also very much a standalone.

**  
** **  
** **  
** **  
** **Zero**

  
The team that storms the building sweeps her away before he has the chance to speak.  
  
No, wrong. He has the chance. He just _can’t_ speak. The sharp pain from his injured wings rests inside his body and there’s a hard edge to the Detective’s gaze when she stares at him, the sensation similar to that of brushing against spears whenever he tries to catch it. Point bloody well made and he knows it but he can’t _stand_ it. So he keeps trying to look at her, urges her to see him, to tell him in whatever minor gesture that she’s okay, that they can talk about what she had just witnessed and that he can _explain_ .  
  
She looks away as the cops arrive.  
  
She looks away as she agrees to come back to the station for a statement before checking in with a medic. Every the agreeable, low-maintenance professional and the notion aches in his belly, behind his breastbone.  
  
Lucifer sits motionless and lets them dress a shallow cut on the back of his right hand and the slightly deeper slash on his upper arm. Demon blades and their inherent poison, pumping a quiet beat inside his system. That one hurts and puzzles the young paramedic that sees it.  
  
“It’ll heal just fine,” Lucifer assures him. The sound of his voice startles him, how calm it is when everything had been fire and ashes only minutes ago.  
  
He has taken a human life, such as it was.  
  
He has shown the Detective his true face.  
  
She looks away as she leaves. 

\---  
  
  
He sits in Linda’s kitchen observing an ugly painting while the good doctor is pouring drinks.  
  
“You will have to give her some time, Lucifer,” she says, placing a massive dry martini before him.  
  
“How much? How long?” Time means nothing to him, the humans never understand that as they build their entire lives around it. He had given his Father a millennia, that still had not been enough.   
  
“It’s not like there’s a manual.” Linda is patient and calm, sits down opposite him and reaches for his hands over the table, like he’s a human spawn in need of comfort and perhaps he is because her touch calms him, its warmth reaching inwards. “And given what you are telling me went down with Pierce - _Cain_ , I can only imagine the things Chloe are going through right now.”  
  
Lucifer drinks. Everything spins.  
  
He doesn’t stop falling.

* * *

  
  
  
**One**  
  
  
He calls her. Four times. 

He tells himself that she’s busy, that she’s turned off the sound, that she’s catching up on sleep; he tries to entertain himself with the thought that she’s bulk shopping for groceries in some hellish mall area in the distant outskirts he never visits unless forced to.  
  
One time he actually goes with her, on a dare. The dare, of course, is that he, despite all his supposed stamina, wouldn’t last one Saturday afternoon doing ordinary people stuff. He laughs, accepts anything that will give him time with the Detective. So they're on. She eye-rolls away his offer to drive her in his car, claiming a convertible isn’t suitable for the mission at hand.  
  
They go for groceries and it’s his turn to roll his eyes at what humans think is a bargain or even more so at what they consider quality. The Detective isn’t a fool, still she grabs the most _absurd_ things off the shelves and Lucifer holds his tongue, asks casually about her selection and tries to fathom why anyone would need deep-fried frozen meat or bread shaped like stars. They've got a hell-loop going that reminds him of this, actually. A former cashier's never-ending nightmare. Brightly colored boxes, tins, plastic bowls and wooden crates. It’s a turmoil of colors, of sounds, of the ugliest part of Earth all crammed into one huge room.  
  
“Giving up yet?” She half-shouts over the massive counter of frozen meals. Microwave cooking has got to be the all-time low of human evolution, even the early barbarians were smarter about their food; he doesn’t say that, either.  
  
“Absolutely not. This is delightful, detective. Though it all comes down to the company, of course.” He has never lied to her. She has rarely believed him. 

"Yeah." He can hear her chuckle even as he eyes the section of frozen cakes suspiciously. Why would anyone eat cake from a freezer, how is that not a sinful violation of human taste? “You just don’t want to lose the bet.”  
  
“I don’t,” he tells her, leaving out the part about how strangely wondrous it is to be by her side for mundane human toil, however grotesque said toil is.  
  
And she doesn't seem to realize the bet is just an excuse to be close to her so he doesn't tell her that, either.

They create a whole language of not speaking and it devastates him when in the end, words are what matters to her.

* * *

  
  
**Two  
**  
  
He calls again. And again. Then he resorts to drinking and to writing messages that she doesn’t read.  
  
_I should have confided in you before, of course_ , he writes. _But you’ll have to remember that the last time in my life that I trusted someone, I was thrown into Hell. Literally, as you modern Americans like to put it. Bad memories._ _  
_  
He adds another stone to his mountain of unread messages an hour or so later:  
  
_But I trust you, Chloe._ _You need to know that._

He doesn’t write that trust requires faith and that his faith had been ripped out of him an eon ago. Until he met her and the humans that followed, trickling down into his existence like water in a wretched desert. That whatever faith he might possess now is because she’s taught him. That because Chloe - and Linda and Trixie and Ella, bright shining lights that they are - is in his path, he might begin to understand the very foundations of it all. 

Hope in the face of hopelessness. The faintest hint of a chance that he might be loved, as he is.

* * *

  
  
**Three  
  
**

The pain where his wings would be if he could bear the thought of unfurling them is a dull reminder, sending stabs of agony through his body but he can't bring himself to check, can't bring himself to look. 

Then the ache goes away, the stinging goes away and the dull throbbing sensation goes away. They leave nothing but a faint trickle of discomfort behind. He thinks they are gone again, thinks of Hell and Father, of the silvery feathers he'd found; he thinks of the monstrous reptile-like wings he's seen the humans paint for him. 

One night he wakes up mid-dream, wings flapping beneath him. He forces them back in, gets up and stands on the balcony until dawn, wrapped in his own frustration and fear.

He still doesn't look.

* * *

  
  
  
**Four**

He doesn't call.  
  
When he walks into the precinct Ella tells him Chloe has taken Trixie to Europe for a vacation. 

"She didn't tell you when she'd be back, buddy?" Her voice betrays surprise, an intimate acceptance that hurls itself inside him, clawing at his confidence.  
  
“Yeah, not gonna tell you anything, man,” Dan says and pushes out of the way.

Lucifer grabs one of the lemon bars he's brought; as he drives home his car smells vaguely of the sugary treat that she loves and he doesn’t know what to _do_ with the fact that the image of Chloe now is a black hole in his chest. 

* * *

  
  
  
**Five  
**  
  
He relapses from his decision to leave her alone and writes to tell her to avoid the food at Le Procope in Paris, to see the Jewish quarters in every city, that if she tells the owner at _La Casa del Caffè Tazza d’Oro_ that she works with Lucifer Morningstar they’ll set her up with real proper beans that she can take home and make real coffee. He writes to tell her that he’s got _extensive knowledge of Europe_ \- definitely true - and will steer her away from the tourist traps. _Let me know_ , he writes thinking let me know if you can accept me if you can forgive me if you can see me the way you did before.

For the first time, she replies.

 _Thanks, but we're probably keeping things touristy.  
_  
That is all.

* * *

**Six  
**  
  
He plays the piano until the songs all bleed into each other, all notes dull and impossible to tell apart. Upstairs he thinks he can hear a couple of disgruntled _boos_ so he leans into his mic and tells them all to get out, that the party is over. _Go, get a bloody life, you pathetic sods._  
  
They’re simple creatures, they will be back again tomorrow. Or others just like them. Scouring the streets outside his home, yearning for booze and skin. Like the demons in his hellish kingdom - he wonders why he hasn't seen the parallels before.  
  
They don’t care about him, he doesn’t care about them; they will always come _back_. 

* * *

**Seven  
** **  
**  
He forces himself to think about other things: The pyramids. Eating caviar from human bodies. Vintage cars. Oral sex. Honey. Lamb steak. Playing with Rachmaninoff in an empty concert hall. The first time he accidentally walked into an opium den in Persia, then later the very first gay club in San Francisco. Belgian chocolate. The scent and sensation of newly tailored suits. The Rolling bloody Stones.  
  
It doesn’t help.   
  
He doesn’t stop falling.  
  


* * *

  
  
**Eight**  
  
  
When he was sent to Hell, he waited.  
  
For a long time, hands curled into the rock formations and his heart numbed to everything, he had waited for it to be just a test, a punishment of the kind he would receive _before_ , a temporary breach of his existence in Heaven.  
  
He was Lucifer but he was also Samael, not that long ago he was _Samael_ and he lit up the sky by his Father’s side. Even with the rebellion between them, even with the long line of failures and betrayals a part of him - hungry, pathetic, useless - had not thought God _would_ forsake him.  
  
He _waited_.  


* * *

  
  
**Nine**  
  
  
Maze tells him about Cain's endgame and her involvement in it. 

That she had regretted it, that it had taken a threat against Linda to make her see her mistake, that she, in a way, is like Lucifer. She isn’t, but he doesn’t tell her that. He has sworn her to do the most atrocious things in his name, dragged her to Earth and dumped her here in a pile of her own humanized feelings and impulses. He has, he has come to realize, no right to expect anything from her.  
  
“So where does this leave us?” she asks, folding her arms across her chest as she watches him at the other side of the bar up in his penthouse.   
  
He thinks for a second and there’s a flurry of images of could-have-beens. So needlessly _human_ of him but he can’t help it.  
  
“If you _ever_ as much as _plot_ to harm Chloe or Trixie again or use them as means to achieve whatever miserable little end you imagine,” he says. “I swear to you, Mazikeen of the Lilim, that I will force myself through all the dimensions in order to find Azrael’s blade and erase you from eternity with it.”  
  
The devil face is not the only thing that has returned; he can feel the wrath reverberate through his voice as well. Can read it in her face.

"Fair enough.” Maze nods, holds his gaze. “But other than that?"

He shrugs. "Other than that we're okay."

"Good."

He passes her a large glass of vodka. “I’ve been drinking for three days straight, you’ve got to keep up.”  
  


* * *

  
**Ten**  
  
  
He doesn't go to his therapy session so Linda brings the therapy to his penthouse along with vodka. Sits in his favorite armchair with her notepad and her black-rimmed glasses. He adores that she does it; he hates that she does it, his defenses are wearing thinner each time and he could bloody well need them right about now.

"Would you say that this fear of rejection comes from, you know-"

"Being cast out of Heaven and hated by my family and mankind for an eternity? Well dearie me, doctor, I just don't _know_ . What would Freud say?" He tilts his head, looking out over the city view. “Is it even called fear of rejection if it’s a _fact_? It’s the story of my entire bloody existence.”

“So,” Linda establishes, looking longingly at her drink. “It’s going to be one of _those_ sessions.”  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Eleven  
**  
  
He drinks every one of his stored Laphroaig and Bruichladdich in one night. It’s overwhelmingly _brilliant_ for a whole half hour before that angelic body of his decides to rain on his parade, sobering him up to see the still-unread messages he’s sent to Chloe during the brief intoxication.  
  
At least the Devil can spell while drunk.  
  
Then he passes out and dreams about bloodied wings, about Chloe tearing them off his body and about falling, falling, falling.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twelve**  
  
  
There’s a funeral for Charlotte Richards and he attends, against all better judgement. He thinks, vainly, that Chloe might be there.  
  
She isn’t, everyone else is and some of them shouldn’t be.  
  
Dan almost refuses to let him in at the service afterwards, Lucifer almost reaches his car heading home but Ella, stubborn and crying, gets her way and nobody leaves. He wishes he had. The Devil shouldn’t be at funerals.  
  
“She’s in Heaven,” he says, as though the statement is his to deliver. As though anything he says will ever mend the loss, cover the tear in the world. Humans have so little time and they love so deeply. No matter how many eternities he watches them through, it still amazes him to see it every day.  
  
“Just shut the _hell_ up, man,” Dan snaps and if he had any hellfire in his body, Lucifer knows it would _burn_.  
  
“I… just hope she’s in a better place,” Ella says with broken faith scattered over her voice; he spikes her coffee with half his flask a moment later and gets a grateful glance in return.  
  
_Abide with me; fast falls the eventide._   
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Thirteen**  
  
  
He chats with Trixie for a decent part of the afternoon, responds to messages that she sends him at a fast pace all the while he’s wondering if she’s alone in seeing his answers, if she’s with Chloe, if she knows, if she accepts, if she will come back.  
  
He doesn’t ask Trixie.  
  
He writes about gladiators and old legends, about Harry Potter and the inherent evilness of cats.  
  
A strange warmth in his chest, a lurching kind of hope that is so brittle it has thorns.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Fourteen**  
  
  
When he tried to leave Los Angeles to protect her, he’d made it for thirteen days away before caving in, going back in a blaze of inglorious retreat. _Thirteen_ and each one had felt tremendous, like an outstretched torture.  
  
For all his celestial stamina, it appears Chloe is one up on him.  
  


* * *

  
  
**Fifteen**  
  
  
There’s a postcard for him.  
  
It's the only proper postcard he's received in his life, not counting cards that have been used for other purposes: phone numbers, ciphers, sexual invitations, threats, drug recipes scribbled in the wild rush of chemically induced _joy_.  
  
This one is of an entirely different nature and it marks something; he's not certain what.  
  
This one is from Trixie in Rome, depicts the Colosseum by night and has her ugly child-handwriting on the back.  
  
_Hey Lucifer!_ _  
_ _I love the gelato here. Mmm._ _  
_ _You would like the city. Have you been here?_ _  
_ _Miss you. When I get back we will have movie night, mom has promised._ _  
_ _I’ll invite you._ _  
_ _Hugs and kisses. Beatrice._

He looks at the postcard for the longest time before he puts it in his safe and closes, carefully.

* * *

  
**Sixteen**  
  
  
Thanks to a fast-pacing realtor, Marcus Pierce's house already appears in the online listings over homes for sale.  
  
Lucifer thinks it might be a good thing that Chloe is away and doesn’t have to see it.  
  
Then he thinks of Chloe _living_ there, of the blithering clod raising her spawn, of the future Pecker babies populating the rooms, grabbing with their sticky hands all over the minimalist walls, screaming their lungs out. 

It's a horrible thought but she had _wanted_ it. For a moment at least some part of her had wanted exactly what Lucifer absolutely cannot give her.  
  
He doesn’t know what to do with that, least of all now.  
  


* * *

  
  
**Seventeen**  
  
  
“You’re scaring the guests, boss, _sir_ ,” Benjamin tells him, breathlessly. Lucifer has told him repeatedly to not call him sir, yet every day he is.  
  
“I do what now?”  
  
“The guests. You’re scaring them. When you - you know -”  
  
His pretty little face is all distorted with badly managed nerves and Lucifer’s heart plunges.  
  
“When I give them pointers about how to treat each other?” he offers. The idiots he’s referring to had been having a betting contest involving some of Lux’s dancers, followed by a prolonged session of not understanding the meaning of consent. He had flashed his hellfire to one of them before grabbing hold of his own self-restraint again. “They are one expensive shirt away from Homo habilis, the lot of them.”  
  
Benjamin nods. “It’s - it’s not _bad_ advice, boss. Really. But perhaps think about the tone?”  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Eighteen**  
  
  
He doesn’t leave the penthouse.  
  
He doesn’t shave, doesn’t order food, doesn’t even drink. He watches two seasons of CSI and smokes until his mouth feels sore but _isn’t_ because it’s just a silly delusion like everything else.  
  


* * *

  
  
**Nineteen**  
  
  
“Do you think your brother will be back?” Linda asks him over a fifth glass of wine on his balcony. He’s turned down so many offers of sex recently that the incessant chain of people popping in and out to see him has narrowed out, almost faded entirely. In a future where Chloe _doesn’t_ return he will need to rectify this.  
  
“Amenadiel?” Lucifer looks into his own empty glass, feeling his breast pocket for the cigarettes he knows are there.  
  
“No, your other brother Kevin. Of _course_ I mean Amenadiel.”  
  
“I’m sure there’s a lesser angel somewhere called Kevin. Which technically would make him my brother. Or half-brother. Semi-brother, is that a thing?”  
  
“ _Lucifer_ .”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Do you honestly believe your brother will be back?” Even he can hear that the casual tone is fake, everything under the surface boils rather than simmers.  
  
He refills her glass, then his own. Lights a cigarette and passes the pack to her.   
  
“A year ago I would have said no,” he responds, drawing smoke into his lungs. “Now, I’m not so certain. I think he might. Or rather - I think you might lure him back.”  
  
She looks at him expectantly, like she waits for his counter-question, his million dollar level inquiry. Lucifer counts the stars he once made over their heads, tries to separate them from the ones his Father made to show him, guide him, later probably to _taunt_ him. Tries to separate himself from the unbearable pain of this realization of his greatest fear. That the woman he loves, the only woman he has ever loved, has turned away in disgust.  
  
He doesn’t ask if Linda thinks Chloe will be back. He doesn’t know if he can stand her answer.  
  


* * *

  
  
**Twenty**  
  
  
He wonders what he will do if Chloe doesn’t return. What he will pursue, how he will fill his days. What reason he will find for staying when there is nothing here for him anymore.  
  
He’s never felt that way before and it scares him even after two bags of the best cocaine he can find on the market.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twenty-one**

  
The precinct is different without her.  
  
He comes in every morning, like he did before, waits around to see if she will show up. He brings food and snacks, coffee from that one good place a few blocks away that can make coffee taste like actual coffee, dark and rich. He chats to Rogers about her wife’s cancer treatment, to Jones about setting his kid up with a job in showbiz, to Chambers about his aunt’s bar down in Vegas that Lucifer has tried to infuse with money to keep it going, if only for the lovely jukeboxes and the great drinks.  
  
Dan tells him to get out, Ella apologizes for Dan and Lucifer is so bloody tired of this hell-loop that he _swears_ not to bother coming in the following day.  
  
Then he comes in, anyway.

* * *

**Twenty-two**

Deja, a delightful actress in transit stops by Lux, her entire being a glittering pool of light as she sits close, smiles, twirls stray black curls around her finger as she talks.

He turns her down. Orders another round of drinks and turns her down. 

"I'd heard the rumors," she says, voice both haughty and disappointed, always a little defiant in her defeat as he recalls it. "Didn't think they'd be true. At least not for me."  
  
It should probably concern him but it doesn’t.  
  
So very few things do.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twenty-three**  
  
  
Miss Lopez drinks herself asleep at _Lux_ and he carries her up to his bed. Tucks her in fully clothed beneath crisp sheets. When he tries to remove her glasses, she stirs awake for a moment.  
  
“Oh, it’s you. Hey Lucifer.” Her voice is slurry and thick and he thinks of Rae-Rae, always Rae-Rae with her now that he knows the full story there. It makes him want to press a kiss to Miss Lopez' forehead the way he would with his sister, a million years ago. He decides against it.  
  
“Don’t vomit on my Persian carpet,” he says and pats her on her shoulder as he rises from the bed. “But do feel free to use my home as you want. I’ll be just around the corner.”  
  
He only hears a stifled mumbling in response to that and figures she has gone back to sleep until the breathing changes pace again and she seems to return.  
  
“We’ll get her back, buddy,” she mutters.  
  
He wishes he believed her.   
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twenty-four**  
  
  
“Let’s talk a little about your devil face returning.” Linda watches him intently.  
  
Lucifer drinks one glass of water. Then a second one. She has names for that sort of behavior too, he knows because he’s read everything she writes about him in a misguided quest for knowledge. Well, most of his quests for knowledge are, in fact, misguided. Next time he goes through her notes he'll add that.   
  
“No,” he says.  
  
“No?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Her sigh is deep, travels through the air like a hot cloud.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twenty-five**  
  
  
When he fell, he dragged a whole army of angels with him.  
  
Loyal revolutionaries, various miscreants, low-ranking warriors dreaming of change. He’d been their leader, the shining one. Oh how they must have put their hopes in him and his arrogant, prideful prancing into the Silver City.  
  
He didn’t even bother learning the names of more than a handful of them. Never saw the need.  
  
Later, when the former angels turned demons flocking around him with their faces distorted, their bodies transformed, he would never know which ones that fell with him and which ones that had waited in the pits of Hell.  
  
He had refused them, shut them out of the Tower, forbidden them within his sight. Only the lilim were allowed, their origin traceable back to Lilith who had not so much fallen as she had _jumped_ out of the Garden, shouting triumphantly at high heavens.  
  
The rest the King of Hell had kept at a distance. As always protecting himself from the truth, from the depths of his own guilt.  
  
He fell and he fell and he fell.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twenty-six**  
  
  
His defenses are crumbling.  
  
He happens to drive by her house in the afternoon, takes a detour to pass by Trixie’s school when the urchins gush out of the building to reunite with the parents.  
  
They’re still not back.  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twenty-seven**  
  
  
It’s crumbling, cracking.  
  
Linda asks him - for the tenth time this year - what it is that _he_ wants.  
  
Lucifer finds that the answer gets stuck somewhere inside him, between his ribs and his heart.  
  
What does he want - how _can_ he want - when his desire is what destroyed him in the first place, turned him into the monster he is?  


* * *

  
  
  
**Twenty-eight**  
  
  
He wants her to laugh, to shine, to outsmart him at every crime scene and argue with him over details, over sandwiches and his fancy-schmancy ways. He wants her in his bed, in his shower, in his bloody head, reminding him at every turn of her existence because that existence is the single best argument for everything. He doesn’t ever want to be without her.  
  
He wants her to look at him and not see a monster.  
  
He wants to look at himself and not see a monster.  
  
He wants to rest.  


* * *

  
  
**Twenty-nine**  
  
  
She’s not coming back.  


* * *

  
  
  
**Thirty  
**  
  
“Can I just go now?” he thief in his bedroom asks, obviously confused.  
  
Lucifer tosses another chunk of gold into the man’s arms.  
  
“Be something _else_!” he says, trying to sound encouraging or at least self-righteous like his brothers. “Do better! Surprise me, why don’t you.”  
  
“Whatever, man.”  
  
No, he thinks and pours himself a drink. Not _whatever_. It’s never whatever. It always matters, it always counts, it’s never done.  
  
He’s never _done_.  
  


* * *

  
  
**Thirty-one  
  
**

She's back. 

She claims everything is fine though he can see it clearly isn't. 

She’s back and she doesn’t touch him. Ever since they first met she has touched him - a hand here, a pat there, a pull or a push when he’s in need of being steered - and she doesn’t even know how rare that is, how few people that do that to him. It had even startled him at first, the unfamiliar edges of intimacy difficult for an immortal who has only ever held others during sex and not always even then. But Chloe had not known, she had kept brushing palms over his shoulder, tapping fingers along his upper arm, rubbing her thumb against his wrist, holding his hand. Touch, touch, touch. Now the absence of it makes his stomach coil.  
  
He touches her instead. A hand on her shoulder and she recoils like he’s a fire, burning her.  
  
_Nothing_ is fine. 

He doesn't stop falling. 


End file.
